Madam, - Adi Roche (December 28th) must be an exceedingly clever woman.
An international panel of experts, coming from a number of UN organisations including WHO, IAEA, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and others, examined all the evidence over several years and recently produced a 500-page report on the effects of the Chernobyl accident. Concerning health effects, the group concluded that the accident had resulted in 56 deaths, mostly of men who went in to clean up - thereby receiving lethal doses of radiation - together with nine deaths from cancer of the thyroid in children.
And yet, as a result of her recent two-month visit to Ukraine and Belarus, Adi Roche is now able to report that "there is conclusive observable evidence ... of increases in cancer and genetic related diseases since the Chernobyl disaster". Note, however, that she says "since", even she, I suspect, wouldn't dare go as far as "caused by". As a clever woman, she wouldn't fall into the trap of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. - Yours, etc,
Mrs EVE WHITE, Knocksinna Crescent, Dublin 18.
Madam, - "Why should scientists of many disciplines from a wide array of countries wish to tell anything other than the truth as they see it from their observations over 19 years?" asks Sir Bernard Ingham, (January 2nd).
Perhaps he should put that question to the long line of scientific experts who have been generating reassuring disinformation for decades in relation to procedures, fires, spillages and general safety a little closer than is Chernobyl to both our homes (Windscale/Sellafield).
Might it be that scientists are no more ethical than the average mortal, and that science carries no automatic guarantee of the inclusion of conscience? - Yours, etc,
DAMIEN FLINTER, Tullyvoheen, Clifden, Co Galway.
Madam, - Despite an excellent article by Prof William Reville (Science Today, December 1st) on the international report entitled "Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Effects", and letters since then to this page supporting its findings, some readers - most recently Laurence Henson (January 5th) - continue to deny the scientific facts.
No matter how meritorious and charitable the work of Irish support groups in and around Chernobyl may be, it is simply not true that the "irreparable malformations blighting so many children" in that area can be blamed on the accident, as stated by Mr Henson. This is yet another one of the many widely believed exaggerations about the effects of the Chernobyl accident.
The refusal to accept the findings, gathered over several years, by hundreds of doctors and scientists from UN agencies and affected countries is akin to the general disbelief of the findings of Copernicus and Galileo on the relative motions of earth and sun. It beggars belief. - Yours, etc,
FRANK TURVEY, Church Road, Greystones, Co Wickow.